Published 4:00 am, Saturday, August 5, 2000

In "Another American: Asking and Telling,'' which opened in previews this week at the New Conservatory Theatre Center, New York actor Marc Wolf explores one of the most fractious issues of the past decade. Should gays and lesbians be allowed to serve in the U.S. military, the play asks, or does their presence constitute a security risk?

Wolf plays 18 characters in the one-man production -- men and women, gay and straight -- but doesn't take sides. For some, his lack of bias is equal to betrayal: Since Wolf himself is gay, they've argued, shouldn't he be slamming the military and its "don't ask, don't tell" policy? "People should get angry at me," Wolf said this week in the New Conservatory's offices on Van Ness Avenue. "Theater should shake things up, explore conflict. And why shouldn't audiences hear the best arguments from both sides?"

Directed by Joe Mantello ("Love! Valour! Compassion!") and winner of an Obie Award for Wolf, "Another American" borrows the documentary-theater format made popular by actress Anna Deavere Smith with "Fires in the Mirror" and "Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992." Over a three-year period, Wolf interviewed 200 people across the United States: gay and straight military personnel, veterans from World War II to the Persian Gulf War, lawyers and judges, academics and family members of slain servicemen.

Finding people who would talk wasn't easy. Some spoke on condition of anonymity, Wolf says, "usually because of a career in the military or in professions where 'coming out' would jeopardize them." Others didn't want to be named for fear of losing custody of their children.

For the final mix, he chose people on all sides of the issues: The Greek sociologist who wrote the "don't ask, don't tell" policy; a discharged lesbian who wants reinstatement; a retired Army colonel who opposes the "force-feeding" of gays into combat units; an effeminate soldier nicknamed Mary Alice; and the mother of a young man who in 1992 was killed by fellow sailors because he was gay.

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Wolf honed their testimony to an essence and created a montage that he performs without costume changes, using only his voice and gestures. When "Another American" premiered last December at New York's Theater at St. Clements, the Village Voice called it "a smart, provocative and chilling event."

For Wolf, 37, who once played a role on the soap opera "Guiding Light," the process of interviewing, transcribing the tapes and assembling the play was grueling. "I worked long hours, and I worked consistently on it for three years," he says. "But I felt I needed to do it, that the stories needed to get out -- as fast as possible."

When Wolf started the project in 1996, he says, "this issue was really not being discussed. 'Don't ask, don't tell' had buried the issue." A compromise instituted after President Clinton failed to lift the ban on gays in the armed services, the policy hadn't resolved the conflict, Wolf believes, but deepened divisions and sent military gays and lesbians back into the closet.

"The situation is worse now than it was before the policy came in. Before, you could be in the closet and not arouse much suspicion. Now, everybody is on the lookout, and everybody is cautious. I've been told the harassment is worse. Even straight people are careful not to do things that make them appear gay."

The policy "sounds simple," Wolf says, "but it's a maze of complications and misunderstandings. It strikes everybody, even in the military, as ludicrous."

Although he had never been overtly political, Wolf felt driven to reopen the debate. "I thought, 'Maybe if these stories could get told, then another kid might not get murdered by his fellow service members -- which actually happened last summer." While Wolf was workshopping the play, Pfc. Barry Winchell, 21, was beaten to death with a baseball bat by a fellow soldier in Fort Campbell, Ky.

Since its premiere, Wolf says, "Another American" has made "a huge impact" on some people. "Two lawyers I know who have worked on this issue a lot said to me, 'What you're doing may be more important than any of the legislation that we've passed, because you are humanizing a theoretical argument.' "

In May, Wolf felt that impact most acutely when Dorothy Hajdys- Holman, the mother of slain serviceman Allen Schindler, attended a performance in Washington, D.C. -- a benefit for the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network.

"She was in the front row," Wolf says. "The whole audience knew she was there." And when he came to the part of the monologue in which "Dorothy" says her son's mangled body could be identified only by the tattoos on his arms, Wolf heard her choking up.

Up until that point, Hajdys-Holman told a reporter, "I've been able to tell people about that without crying, without choking up. But when I saw myself through him, I cried."